Tax Agency Employee Fired For Developing a Game

Canadian indie game developer David S. Gallant created a game a few months ago that illustrated the drudgery of his day job. A valid and novel way to express oneself, right? His employer, unfortunately, disagreed.

A tweet from Gallant himself suggests that he was fired for creating the game.

The game in question is a short and sweet titled called I Get This Call Every Day, which is described as, "a personal tale of unwinnable realities." Gallant was a part-time employee at the Canada Revenue Agency. His job was to provide customer service by taking calls from taxpayers. As illustrated by the game, which is shown in the trailer below, a lot of these calls were exercises in frustration, since many callers had trouble providing necessary information.

People often have gripes with their jobs and it's not unheard of to hear about them releasing steam using various outlets, be it exercise, venting to a friend or to fellow employees, talk behind that idiot Arcade Sushi editor George's back [Hey! —Ed.], or maybe even by producing something creative, which was what Gallant did.

Gallant was interviewed about the game by the Toronto Star, in which it's said that his bosses were not happy when they found out I Get This Call Every Day existed. The article said that National Revenue Minister Gail Shea's communications director, Clark Olsen, sent an e-mail to the Star that stated, "The Minister considers this type of conduct offensive and completely unacceptable."

An investigation was supposed to follow in which the company would make sure that, "no confidential taxpayer information was compromised."

And now, judging by his tweet, Gallant has been terminated. Many denizens of the Twittersphere offered their condolences, and many encouraged him to find work in the video game industry, especially now that he's getting publicity from the press.

We at Arcade Sushi wish him the best of luck and encourage you to check out I Get This Call Every Day. Maybe we'll see more work from him in a more mainstream capacity in the future.